24.2.07

the stylophile who came in from the cold

Hej hej... la femme is still alive and booting. Went on a little culture trek, but I'm back now. Missed you, and will update soon.

As this is the season for warm coats and grey skies (I'm trying to combat the gloom with a 1960s leopard print mini-coat), I leave you with two photographs taken recently at train stations on opposite sides of the planet.

>> Paris

>> Kazakhstan

Brrr. Today in Milan, furry coats are being shown for next fall. I love my leopard but am definitely ready for the breezy warmth of spring!paris pic: grand magasinkazak pic: sent by a friend currently on the Trans Siberian Express

9 comments:

I've always want to go to Kazakhstan... You must provide me with some arguments I can use to convince my benefactors to send me there: rivers of gold? cutting edge technology in flugel production? roads paved in leopard skin silk?

the kazakhstan picture looks very lonely and sad, in contrast with the paris one. in fact i don't see the fashionable point. is kinda like a bad joke. i'm sorry but its not my taste. comparing the first and the second world.

I don't mean to compare them bella- at least certainly not in a way that belittles poverty in Eastern Europe. The images are similar in that they were taken within weeks of each other by two of my favourite amateur photographers, in two very different countries. Both show the backs of every day citizens, walking towards a train station in their winter jackets. I do the same thing every day- again in a very different country, and take comfort in the fact that I'm just one of millions. C'est tout... no offense intended :)

Only some of the easy ones to get to: Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (when it was one country), Hungary, and Croatia. But I would really like to experience whatever it is to be deep in the heart of Central Asia. I think not only of the Silk Road but equally of bleak post-Communist landscapes. I think of the waves of modern human tribes that were supposed to originate from Central Asia, and imagine the feeling of being simultaneously in the center of the world and in its backwater. I think of it as the bulging paunch that hangs over the world's waist: NY-London-Paris-Rome-Istanbul-Bombay- Shanhai-Los Angeles.

I'm still waiting to hear about how you got there, though in some ways I'd rather imagine you at the Greyhound Bus Station on Bay Street spotting a bus heading to Kazakhstan and saying 'Why not?'

bonjour, adeleine! this may be a bit off-topic, but could you give a girl about to go to paris some advice? i am going for 5 days in april and i want a francophile's guide to the city of lights. merci.